L'OREAL Africa Middle East held last Feb. 8 a high-powered workshop with all its major freight forwarders and transporters to further the cause of sustainable transportation. The workshop, led by the L'Oréal Africa Middle East supply chain team, aligned distribution and supply chain partners with the Group's vision of sustainable transport. It was held under the umbrella of L'Oréal's "Sharing Beauty With All" (SBWA) program, which sets out sustainability targets for the business until 2020. Under SBWA, the L'Oréal Group has successfully decoupled growth from carbon emissions. By the end of 2015, the Group had reduced its emissions by 56% and increased production by 26% over a 10-year period. The workshop hosted expert speakers such as EWS-WWF's Corporate Sustainability Manager Tamara Withers, who delivered a speech on the importance of addressing climate change and building sustainability into operations and supply chains region-wide. "It is very important for us to realize that we are living in emerging markets where the scarcity of the resources will be a huge challenge in the near future. This scarcity leads to frugality and leads to be more innovative than anybody else. SBWA is a must have for the sustainability of our business and the business of our partners here today," said Martin Motte, Director of Operations at L'Oréal Africa Middle East. By 2020, the L'Oréal Group aims to reduce the environmental impact of its plants and distribution centers by 60% compared to a 2005 baseline. This involves shrinking the transport footprint, while also cutting waste per unit of finished product, reducing water consumption and slashing CO2 emissions. This commitment covers not only plants and distribution centers, but also L'Oréal's entire value chain from sourcing to consumption, production, transportation and packaging. The supply chain workshop focused on L'Oréal's goal of reducing CO2 emissions generated by the transportation of products from plants to distribution centers and onwards to customers. The Group aims to decrease emissions by unit by kilometer by 20% between 2011 and 2020. The event also introduced L'Oréal's logistics partners and transporters to possible efficiency gains through higher load factors and multimodal transport possibilities. The workshop is part of global series that kicked off in France, and will travel around the world to New York, Mexico and Shanghai by the end of H1 2017.
